Obituaries

MUSCATINE (AP) ? A coal-fueled power plant in eastern Iowa has closed and will be demolished to make way for green space.The Muscatine Journal reports that the CIPCO Fair Station near Montpelier burned the last of its coal on Nov. 2. The closure of the station will mean the loss of 23 jobs.Kathy Breheny, a spokeswoman for the cooperative, says the plant is closing because it was built in the 1960s and isn?t ...

Fairfield City Council member Michael Halley and Fairfield Sustainability Coordinator Scott Timm were invited by Iowa Department of Natural Resources to attend a conference in Burlington Thursday to share their expertise.?We were invited to speak to a group of more than 100 arborists, city officials and city foresters about Fairfield?s Urban Tree Plan,? said Halley. ?The DNR likes how Fairfield is conducting an ...

DUBUQUE (AP) ? The Dubuque City Council is considering applying for nearly $100 million in state tax incentives as part of a huge flood-mitigation project that could stretch over more than 20 years.City officials estimate the Bee Branch Creek restoration project, which will cost nearly $180 million, could prevent an estimated $582 million in damages over its 100-year design life. It includes enhancing sewer ...

ANKENY (AP) ? State officials say Iowa has averaged more than 1,000 motorcycle crashes annually over the last five years, including about 50 fatalities.Des Moines television station KCCI says some of those crashes resulted in traumatic brain injuries.Officials at a leading care facility for those types of injuries say they?ve seen an unusually high number of cases this fall. Seven motorcyclists have been ...

DAVENPORT (AP) ? Officials at St. Ambrose University in Davenport have reduced the scale of a planned athletic complex, but nearby residents remain unhappy about the proposal.The Quad-City Times reports neighbors met with officials at the private university Thursday to discuss the revised plans.St. Ambrose initially had proposed a 5,000-seat football stadium that drew complaints from residents.The new plan ...

KEOSAUQUA (AP) ? A southeast Iowa hog farm with a history of manure accidents has spilled thousands of gallons of manure into a Van Buren County tributary of the Des Moines River just weeks after a state inspection.An environmental activist group said Friday the Iowa Department of Natural Resources could have prevented the spill if it had cracked down on the operation during an August inspection.A clogged drain ...

Jefferson County is responsible for Ash Avenue, even as it runs through Batavia as Fourth Street, because the town?s population is under 500 people.In February, Batavia Mayor Randy Major asked the supervisors and county engineer about repairs for this Farm-to-Market road.Major had said it was almost impossible to have two-way traffic on the road and a lot of people have asked him about it and asked when it can ...

Terrorists ?found a second chance? to thrive in Iraq, the nation?s prime minister said Thursday in asking for new U.S. aid to beat back a bloody insurgency that has been fueled by the neighboring Syrian civil war and the departure of American troops from Iraq two years ago.Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a packed auditorium at the U.S. Institute of Peace that he needs additional weapons, help with ...

Bryan Cranston has an authoritative voice, which all by itself would qualify him to narrate ?Big History.?But there?s another reason Cranston is a fine choice for this new docuseries, which pledges to reveal ?one grand unified theory? for how every event in history (13.7 billion years of it) is intertwined by science. Cranston, after all, starred in the recently concluded drama ?Breaking Bad? as Walter White, ...

A Syrian activist group says more than 120,000 people have been killed since the start of the country?s civil war nearly three years ago.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll through a network of activists in Syria, said Friday that 120,296 people have died.Of those, it said 61,067 are civilians, including 6,365 children.On the government side, it said ...